March 17, 2017

Tech Expands Its Role in Advertising

Spongecell creates dynamically personalized Web ads, which means it can insert content based on the viewer’s location, interests, past purchases, or whatever other data is available. Pretty neat, although much depends on the data. That might come from the advertiser’s own system (maybe a Customer Data Platform) or be provided by the publisher (e.g. audience attributes). Sponcell itself provides some variables including time of day, location, and local weather. As of today, it can also access data from Grapeshot, which analyzes the keywords used on Web sites to help understand the site viewers’ interests.

BrightLine creates interactive TV ads, allowing viewers with an Internet-connected TV to do things like pick content, play games, find local stores, enter contests, view product catalogs, and place orders. They’ve just partnered with Sizmek to enable distribution of BrightLine-created ads across computers and mobile devices. In other words, they’re bringing Web-like interaction to the Web. That may sound like coals-to-New Castle but it does let marketers get more use from their advanced creative.

As advertising involves more technology (see above), it’s no wonder that tech experts are playing a larger role in the industry. Here’s a very interesting piece from Ad Week on investments in ad agencies by giant tech firms like Accenture and IBM. Did you know that Accenture already has 36,000 design and creative professionals worldwide? If you're wondering what this means for marketing technology and CDPs, here are some additional thoughts.

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